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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22741192">Regarding Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everilde/pseuds/Everilde'>Everilde</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XIV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Spoilers, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Spoilers, Gen, Love, Original Character(s), Valentine's Day, idk it just became a stream of thoughts really</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 08:15:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22741192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everilde/pseuds/Everilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is complicated and clouded by loss. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just a short stream of thoughts about my OC Warrior of Light.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)/Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Regarding Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The tense is weird, I'm experimenting, pls forgive</p>
<p>Also not editing this since it's just a random stream of nonsense</p>
<p>Alternatively titled: Everilde clearly has a thing for Elezen.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She does not know if she has ever been in love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her history prior to the Calamity is empty, a void of lost memories she can neither grasp nor glimpse. Only her instincts and muscle-memory keep her tethered to that past, forbidding her to forget trained skills and obscured cultural beliefs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sometimes the memory of a feeling teases her, making her think that perhaps she has known love… Or, perhaps, it is only wishful thinking, a vain hope that at some point in her life she was happy and not so alone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It hardly matters now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She does know that she has <em>almost</em> been in love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>First, it was the Wood Wailer, one of several who found her- a Highlander, of all people – lost in the Twelveswood. His name was Cliodent, a Wildwood Elezen with hair of bark-brown and eyes as deep and rich as fertile soil. The others had feared her, the savage mute who watched them like a predator, maddened by hunger and the emptiness of her memory.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But not Cliodent.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Cliodent had been calm, treating her as one does an injured wild animal – with patience and caution, coupled with a knowing care. It had not taken long for some sense of herself to return, but even before then he had begun to treat her as another intelligent being, as the Hyur she was. It was the Elezen who first gave her parchment and a quill, reminding her that she could read and write, that she knew her own name. It was the Elezen who first learned it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Everilde.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She can still hear his voice read the rough writing aloud; she remembers liking the way her name sounded on his tongue.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She could have fallen in love with Cliodent – perhaps in some small way she already had – but the Elezen had also been the first to teach her how cruel fate can be.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the Calamity's wake, the Elementals had been weakened, and the burden of the Wood Wailers grew. Bandits and poachers, among others who incurred woodsin, threatened the safety of the Shroud's natives.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was during a bandit attack that Cliodent lost his life.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lord Haurchefant Greystone had been the second she almost fell in love with. It was nearly two years after Cliodent's death that she met him, and then another year and a half before the Knight of the Silver Fuller sacrificed himself to save her. She had denied it when he was alive, had declined his attempts at flirtations, but his death made it evident just how fond of the Elezen Everilde truly was. Even now, years later, she grows numb at his memory.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There were others, before and after Haurchefant's fall. Some of them she loved like family, her affections platonic and far from romantic. The Scions she grew to know and love, Moenbryda, Minfilia, Ysayle, Papalymo… To name but a few.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There were others she could have loved as one does a lover, but Lord Greystone's death smothered any longing in her to pursue romance.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She is the Warrior of Light, after-all. She is Hydaelyn's chosen, a beacon of light and hope for the people of Eorzea and now those of Norvrandt, though they call her by a different name. She is one of many bearers of secrets, of truths about the ancient past; a fraction of a being that still resonates in some deep and powerful reaches of her soul.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Most importantly, she is deadly, to both her enemies and to those she loves the most.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>No one is safe in her life; no one is spared the tragedy in her wake.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Everilde cannot bear the thought of falling in love with someone she could so easily lose.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So while she does not know if she has ever been in love before, she <em>does</em> know that she can never afford to be in love at all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>How maddening, then, to feel like she's begun to fall.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Even more-so knowing that the face haunting her waking and dreaming thoughts hails from Ishgard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When the Ishgardian Knight had traveled to the Rising Stones, seeking an audience with the Warriors of Light – both Everilde and her closest friend, Kavivi – the Highlander had been in a dark state. Over the years, depression has crept in easily, and at that time Everilde felt especially empty after finding no solution to bring the other Scions home to the Source. The Knight's presence only managed to stir the dark memories of the Dragonsong War, of the losses and suffering that were dealt before peace could rise up and pave a new future for the people of Ishgard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You killed dozens of Ishgard's finest knights in the Vault,” the Elezen woman had stated. “And I would have been one of them, had I not been stationed elsewhere. I wish to know whether or not I would have died alongside my brothers and sisters that day. I wish to fight you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her eyes, when she spoke, were fixed on Everilde's and in return the Highlander's sorrow had given way to the kindling of her wrath. She had not relished killing the Knights in the Vault, but like so many things the Warriors had been forced into, she had been given no choice.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her heart and mind were ever weary, plagued by duty and memory, with no end in sight for either. But the woman's statement brought a shadow over the Solar that began within Everilde and spread from the Warrior of Light.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For all the people she had fought to save, for all those she had failed... and the stranger would gladly lay down her life at Everilde's hands? The very notion had infuriated the Highlander so much that she could have killed the Knight then and there. It was only for the sake of Tataru, who would have to find and deal with the bloody mess, that Everilde refrained.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Instead she agreed and they fought, without weapons, while Kavivi observed and Tataru – hearing the commotion – banged on the outside of the locked Solar door.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the end, Everilde had the Elezen pinned down. Her eyes remained hard during their spar, a reflection of her savage Highlander blood. But for a moment her gaze had shifted and instead Everilde became only a woman: a tired, weary and near broken woman. The pain in her evergreen eyes had not been physical, but it still cut deep, and in that way – in that brief moment of vulnerability – she tried to express her sorrow and regret for the lives she had taken.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It lasted only a moment before her gaze had hardened again, her eyes dark and burning, but it had been enough. The Knight had been satisfied.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And ever since Everilde has been plagued by thoughts of the Ishgardian Knight, whom she now knows as Amelia.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>She does not know if she has ever been in love.</p>
<p>She does know that she should never fall in love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But now she wonders if she can stop falling in love once she's already begun.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>More than this, Everilde wonders how long it will be before she loses Amelia, too.</p>
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